Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009

Crime scene investigations: fact vs. fiction

"NCIS," "Law and Order," "Criminal Minds'' and the "CSI" franchises are some of the most popular television shows in regular prime time and syndication. These shows have put law enforcement and the crime scene investigator in the spotlight like never before.

"Flashy video, popular music scores, big name actors and a mystery. We have a long history of mystery being popular: Agatha Christie's books, Sherlock Holmes in books, radio, film, TV, as well asa 'young'Sherlock Holmes for kids (a new film is coming out soon on that character even), and on and on - look in any bookstore and they have a whole section devoted to it. Add to that the horror genre, serial killers, true crime, and even the detective magazines that were once so popular," says Robert B. Jenkot, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Coastal Carolina University, who has done research on the so-called "CSI Effect."

What does the popularity of this gritty form of entertainment known as police procedural shows - sometimes detailing brutal violence and the analysis of dead, bloodied bodies - say about us a society?

"On the one hand, we like entertainment that makes us think - Who-Done-Its," says Jenkot. "In order to get you to watch one show over another you need more 'something,' and I don't think a better actor is that thing. 'Law and Order' was once advertized as dealing with issues "Ripped from the headlines!" So current issues probably play a role."

Jack the Ripper is one of the most famous serial killers of all time. Some of us cannot place London on a map, much less the Whitechapel district of London and yet some people are still trying to solve the Ripper murders, one of the coldest cases of all. Our want to solve mysteries is insatiable and these shows have allowed the average person to play along with cops on the streets (actually your TV) as they gather clues.

The "CSI" phenomenon has spread to the Grand Strand, too, as Horry Georgetown Technical College recently christened a new CSI Lab on its Conway campus, and Freestyle Music Park featured a "CSI''-themed interactive show during the theme park's inaugural 2009 season.

HGTC's CSI Lab was created "in response to demand from area law enforcement," according to statement released by the college "to include an emphasis in Crime Scene Investigation (CSI)." However if you think that you can go to school for two years and then the very next week be riding shotgun with Special Agent Gibbs, think again.

OK, so police dramas involving crime scene investigations and forensics dominate network TV's primetime ratings and there's a demand locally for crime scene investigation skills. But the question is: Is what you see on television fiction or reality? The answer is more complex than you might think.

Crime scene investigators have a difficult job and their story is worthy of TV plotlines.

"One of the things that these shows do is illustrate the things that as police officers, we need to do better," says Specialist Peter Cestare, supervisor for crime scenes with the Horry County Police Department. He has an Associates Degree in Criminal Justice, a Bachelor's Degree in Clinical Psychology, and is working toward his Masters in Clinical Psychology. He has been in Law Enforcement for 28 years and is an expert in, get this, blood spatter patterns.

WEIRD SCIENCE?

One of the scenarios frequently played out on police procedural shows is the role of the lone officer who handles evidence, investigates the scenes, and catches the bad guys all while going back to the lab and running a myriad of tests on the evidence.

This is not based in reality.

In reality there is a whole team of people involved in the successful conclusion of a case. Instead of a jack-of-all-trades, there are specialists in each area. The patrol officer makes the first contact on the scene and takes the initial statements. The detective is the one who will clarify the statements and begin the more in-depth investigation. The Crime Scene Unit will process the scene and handles the evidence. They all have special training to be the best at what they do.

But where does the training begin, and how do crime scene investigators earn their stripes?

"Horry County is one of the best trained-agencies in the state. We have done internships with SLED (State Law Enforcement Division), and the FBI Academy," says Cestare. Most crime scene investigators that are working the streets today began as patrolling police officers. They work the streets for 2-3 years before they actually start working in the Crime Scene Unit. Some departments, such as Wilmington, N.C.'s police force, have privatized their Crime Scene Unit which means that the people that work there are not police officers. They are ordinary civilians who get a job working for the police department. They are trained only in the realm of forensic sciences.

Which is better? "It is all in how you apply what you know: education, common sense, knowledge of the streets," says Cestare.

Considering that frequently the suspect will return to the scene of the crime when it is only the Crime Scene Unit there, then there are definite advantages to those personnel being sworn officers. They have the ability to make an arrest or defend themselves if necessary. And the astute crime scene officer that has prior law enforcement experience will have a leg up on the civilian if they draw upon their experience and know what to look for. The civilian is bound to have much more of a learning curve.

Most of what is done at a crime scene is based on science. "Science does not lie," Cestare says. Witness statements can be falsified. People have a tendency to lie. Witnesses do not see the whole crime. Sometimes witnesses do not want to cooperate. Sometimes there are no witnesses. Sometimes people will admit to a crime they did not commit to protect someone else. Human memory can fail. Sometimes no one wants to get involved to help the police. These are all challenges that law enforcement faces when investigating a crime.

If you can get the science correct at a crime scene, then you can tell the story. Sometimes the science takes the human element out of the equation completely. Many crimes have no witnesses. It is those times that the investigators are looked to the most. The science can reconstruct the events even if no one saw it, or worse, if someone is lying and fabricating a story.

GOING HIGH-TECH

The technology of crime scene investigations is something that is evolving every day. The technology leap in the last five years has been so extreme to make it is almost unrecognizable to old-school detectives. We all know the dynamic: A hard-nosed salty detective who is set in his ways and the younger energetic one who is hip to all the new gadgets and fads is a great element of conflict on TV police dramas.

The catch phrase these days in the field of criminal justice is DNA. It is an acronym for Deoxyribonucleic acid which contains the basic building instructions for all life. It is used in law enforcement through a process known as genetic fingerprinting. Your genetic fingerprints can be found in blood, semen, skin, or hair follicles and you leave them wherever you go without realizing it.

The first issue with identifying someone through a genetic fingerprint is that they have to be in the CODIS system (Combined DNA Index System) - a database that contains thousands of convicted persons' DNA profiles. If their DNA is not in the system then DNA is not going to be helpful. "DNA is the biggest backlog in the CSI field," says Specialist Cestare. If there is a violent crime, and it is high profile and requires the utmost speed to get the results back, then they may be able to get them in a week, but other, lower-profile cases could takes months for results.

DNA evidence is also only likely to be used in major crimes. The reality is that the majority of smaller crimes are not going to warrant DNA processing which can influence juries that watch these TV shows. Juries now expect DNA evidence to be presented. This is the "CSI Effect." "The "CSI Effect" is purported to influence juries due to the fact that so many people watch the variety of 'CSI'-type television shows, they expect similar levels of forensic evidence in the trial they are a part of," says CCU's Jenkot. "The idea says that without such evidence, acquittals should be more common. Similarly, the presence of forensic evidence should lead to "easier" cases for the prosecuting attorney--a slam-dunk if you will."

But Jenkot says there isn't conclusive evidence. "There are research findings on both sides of the argument," he says. "The troubling part of the issue is how much (or does) the media influence our beliefs, attitudes, expectations/etc."

OLD THINGS IN NEW WAYS

We have all seen people dusting for fingerprints on TV. They take a small brush and spread powder, while looking for prints to lift. Most of what makes up a fingerprint is water, with some scattered skin cells and dust mixed in. Fingerprints are best lifted off of smooth surfaces, as surfaces that are not smooth will cause incomplete prints or sometimes no print left at all. These prints can be invisible to the eye, or be smudged, partial, or damaged. But even with partial prints identifications can still sometimes be made. Because fingerprints are mostly water, like water they can evaporate over time, making them unusable.

Another way prints can be lifted is if the suspect touched something that stuck to his/her hands, such as ink, oil, or blood. These prints can be lifted in the same manner that the standard fingerprint is lifted. If someone touches something at a crime scene like a dark surface that would be difficult to lift prints off of, crime scene technicians can use a luminescent powder. They spread the powder around and then use a black light to look at the field. The powder will glow under the light exposing any prints that may pop up. Some prints can be found even if the suspect has worn gloves. There is a special type of glove that crime scene investigators wear to make sure that they do not contaminate a print.

The technology of fingerprints is something that has advanced the most in the last five years. In the past, once a print was lifted it would have to be meticulously compared to other fingerprints in order to get a match. Now there is a fingerprint system called IAFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System) that takes the process and completes it much faster. Much like the genetic fingerprinting, the suspect's fingerprints have to be in the system to be scanned and compared to make a match. Your fingers are rolled onto a glass screen over a camera which records your prints, and then they are stored into the system. Once fingerprints are collected at the scene, they can be scanned through the database and matches will show up if they are in the system.

You may be in the system and not even realize it. If you have ever been fingerprinted for anything from getting a background check to trying to get a teaching job, you are in the system. If a suspect is from South Carolina and is in the Palmetto State's fingerprint identifying system, it would take Specialist Cestare longer to drive back to his office than it would to get the matches back. This actually happens much like the television shows. It comes back on a screen just like if you were doing a search on the Internet. If the suspect is not in the system from this state but is perhaps in the system from another state and in the national database, then it will be only a matter of a couple of hours to get a match back. Fingerprints are one of the most effective tools in the law enforcement officer's arsenal to solve crimes. "Our officers train for 16 hours in the crime scene department. They also have one day of in-service a year. All of our new officers are trained on evidence procedures, fingerprinting, and looking for DNA evidence," says Cestare.

Footprint identification is another tool-of-the-trade for crime scene investigators. Crime scene investigators have to be trackers, too. They are very much like hunters, only in this case they are hunting for what happened. If you look at your shoes, you notice that the soles of them are all different. However a shoe company sells thousands of the same shoe models, so this in itself is not a reliable method of identification. All of us walk differently and as we walk our shoes get worn down differently. Also through normal wear-and-tear you will get cracks and different signs of wear on the bottom of your shoe.

If you leave your footprints at a crime scene, an impression of your shoe can be taken from the ground. It can be compared with your shoe and if the impressions are matches then they can place you at the scene. As you walk you will inevitably collect things from the world around you on your shoes. If you are at a crime scene, you will take blood, dirt, and other things on the bottom of your shoes and these can be compared in order to identify you as the perpetrator. There is much that can be told from the spacing of the footprints and the way they are placed in an area. You can tell if someone was running from the spacing of the prints. You can tell if someone was walking with a limp. You can tell the path that they took. You can see if someone was being dragged or how movement transpired around the scene. These prints will all be photographed and cataloged to help paint the picture of the crime.

SAY CHEESE

And speaking of pictures, the science of photography is one of the fastest-advancing areas of crime scene investigations. An investigator will take dozens of photos of a crime scene over the course of an investigation. Nearly all crime scene photography is done in digital format instead of film. With a digital camera the film can never be bad. There have been times that photos were taken of a scene, only to get back to the lab to find that the film was compromised. This one thing could derail an entire investigation. That problem has been eliminated with digital photography.

"Horry County crime scene uses a Nikon G-100 camera for their work," Cestare says, and investigators are trained in photography to get the best quality shots.

But one element of photography that is often portrayed in TV shows is that of image enhancement. This is largely false. Pictures can become no better than the camera and the recording system that they were actually taken with. The idea that a security camera catches a glimpse of a car and it is blurry and of poor quality, and in comes the CSI tech and with the technology of image enhancement, can miraculously read the license plate number and catch the bad guy is a fallacy.

However, one technology used on primetime TV that has a basis in reality is the use of facial recognition software. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and so cannot be afforded by most agencies, but it is quickly becoming a part of our daily lives. It does not require your participation to be recognized. If you are picked up in the camera's view, your image will be compared with a known database similar to your fingerprints or your DNA. Once you are recognized, investigators will be able to compare your mug shot in the system to the photo of you that was just captured by the image. It is quickly changing the way that many security managers do business when they operate at high risk targets. With this technology the cloak of anonymity that we all think we have is beginning to fade away. Big Brother will know where we are all the time.

REAL LIFE CSI

So how does all this technology and jargon translate to the real world?

Cestare, as mentioned previously, is a specialist in blood spatter. There are essentially three kinds of blood spatter. Low velocity spatter is if you cut yourself shaving and drip onto the floor. Medium velocity spatter is if someone were to punch you. The blood that flew away from your wound landing on the world around you would be medium velocity spatter. If you were shot with bullet, the minute traces of blood exiting your body would be high velocity spatter. Cestare recalls a murder in Myrtle Beach a few years ago where the suspect was claiming that he shot his wife with an accidental discharge from his pistol and in his panic accidentally shot her again. He claimed that it took place inside the vehicle. When Cestare processed the vehicle, he found high velocity blood spatter on the rim of the car. This would not have been possible unless the victim were lying on the ground in that spot. Also, if you are shot with a pistol right next to your head, the barrel will make a burn mark in the area you were shot in the shape of the muzzle. If you are shot at very close range, you will get burns on your face from the hot materials coming from the barrel of the weapon, but they will be more dispersed. If you have no burns, then you were shot from a longer range. The victim in this case had these burn marks on her face and he found the tiny high velocity blood spatter patterns consistent with a gun shot. Cestare was able to determine that the suspect stood over the victim with the pistol at a range of 18 inches, near the car tire, and shot the victim - instead of the story the suspect gave police. Science does not lie. Cestare did all of this not with high tech tools but just with the skills of the human eye.

To quantify how much TV has tainted our minds regarding law enforcement is difficult. Specialist Cestare testifies in many trials. Before each trial he has to address the jury and tell them that what they see on TV and what is reality is quite different and they need to put aside what they think they know to listen to the actual science. For instance, during an episode of "CSI," the agents collected a trace of DNA from a crime scene and put the evidence under something called an "omegagammagraph," a fictitious gizmo which analyzed the DNA evidence and a driver's license appeared on a screen identifying the owner of the DNA. One juror saw this and asked Cestare why he did not use one of these omegagammagraph during his investigation.

TV shows may not get it right, but they have sparked public interested in a field that usually got little fan fare. We have come so far from the worlds of Holmes and Watson and yet the dynamics of crime have not changed. With the public interest in this field, maybe it will not be long until someone makes the omegagammagraph a reality. Just remember that sometimes solving a crime takes more than an hour (not counting commercials).